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Wednesday, October 8, 2025

Gary sets up call centre, says report COVID restriction breaches

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2025 days ago
20200323

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Gary Grif­fith, has re­vealed that the TTPS has es­tab­lished a spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Com­mand Cen­tre (OCC) to deal specif­i­cal­ly with the Covid-19 cri­sis.

Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith says this has be­come nec­es­sary fol­low­ing the amend­ments to the Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance and be­cause of re­ports that some peo­ple are still not ad­her­ing to the new guide­lines.

The CoP says the es­tab­lish­ment of the OCC is to en­sure that the pub­lic ad­heres to the new reg­u­la­tions. He is aware that peo­ple are

still con­gre­gat­ing in large num­bers and this must be cur­tailed. He says this is the op­por­tune time for cit­i­zens to uti­lize all forms of so­cial

me­dia to re­port, post, take im­ages of oth­ers in con­tra­ven­tion of the new guide­lines.

There are three main tasks for the Op­er­a­tions Com­mand Cen­tre.

1. To sup­port mea­sures en­cour­ag­ing the ad­her­ence to the new Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance Reg­u­la­tions and;

2. To man­age and op­er­ate as a ‘So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty Call Cen­tre’ where all calls, mes­sages, im­ages re­lat­ed to per­sons con­tra­ven­ing the reg­u­la­tions are re­ceived and trans­ferred to the rel­e­vant TTPS units;

3. To cen­tral­ize op­er­a­tions specif­i­cal­ly re­lat­ed to COVID-19 and all re­lat­ed and off shoot threats, such as an ex­pect­ed shift in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty to­ward home in­va­sion and lar­ce­ny.

The CoP says that the pub­lic has op­tions of re­port­ing these mat­ters:

a) The TTPS App. The CoP calls on cit­i­zens to use the Po­lice Ser­vice App, “You see some­thing, You Say Some­thing”, to re­port per­sons who breach the reg­u­la­tions. All you have to do is down­load the TTPS App.

Once that is done, you go on the right low­er sec­tion of your phone, “Re­port Crime”. Just click on that and you will see op­tions such as up­load­ing pho­tographs and videos.

b) 482-GARY. The CoP says that cit­i­zens can con­tin­ue to send videos and pho­tographs via WHAT­SAPP to 482-GARY.

c) Per­sons can al­so con­tact 555 where re­ports will be re­ceived 24/7.

The CoP is al­so ad­vis­ing cit­i­zens that they can call 999 for an im­me­di­ate re­sponse from the TTPS.

The CoP says that all 85 Emer­gency Re­sponse Pa­trol (ERP) ve­hi­cles, will be ful­ly-equipped and be avail­able to re­spond to these calls 24 hours a day.

Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith states “in these un­prece­dent­ed times, we are all en­cour­aged to look out for each oth­er, I can­not em­pha­size enough the im­por­tance of the part­ner­ship be­tween the cit­i­zen­ry and the TTPS.

I en­cour­age per­sons to uti­lize all forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion as stat­ed to share those who may be in con­tra­ven­tion of the reg­u­la­tions, as we are all in this to­geth­er. If you see some­thing, say some­thing, and we have pro­vid­ed three op­tions.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Le­gal No­tice 57, bars, cin­e­mas, and rac­ing pools, have been or­dered closed. There will be no more church ser­vices, in­house din­ing at restau­rants have been cur­tailed, and there will be no more con­gre­gat­ing in groups of more than ten per­sons.

Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith says there were re­ports that cer­tain or­ga­ni­za­tions have still not been ad­her­ing to the guide­lines laid out, and en­cour­aged gath­er­ings of more than ten per­sons. He says po­lice of­fi­cers vis­it­ed these places since the amend­ments were put in place, speak­ing to per­sons and ad­vis­ing them not to breach the laws.

He says the po­lice of­fi­cers are not about ar­rest­ing per­sons, but re­al­ly ad­vis­ing them against breach­ing the laws at a time when all hands should be on deck to fight Covid-19.

WHAT THE REG­U­LA­TIONS SAY

The Pub­lic Health (2019 Nov­el Coro­n­avirus (2019nCoV) (No 3) Reg­u­la­tions 2020

It shall be an of­fence dur­ing the pe­ri­od March 22 and April 30, 2020 for any per­son:

1) To con­duct the busi­ness or a bar, whether or not the per­son is a li­censed per­son un­der the Liquor Li­cens­es Act;

2) To op­er­ate a Club as de­fined in Sec­tion 2 of the Reg­is­tra­tion of Clubs Act;

3) To op­er­ate a The­atre un­der the Cin­e­mato­graph Act;

4) To op­er­ate a Com­mon Gam­ing House or Bet­ting Of­fice li­censed un­der the Gam­bling and Bet­ting Act;

5) To con­duct re­li­gious or ec­cle­si­as­tic ser­vices or any oth­er re­li­gious gath­er­ings where the num­ber of per­sons par­tic­i­pat­ing there­in, ex­ceeds ten and;

6) To pro­vide the ameni­ty of seat­ed din­ing at a restau­rant to any cus­tomer.


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